The modern petrochemical industry makes extensive use of cracking and fractionation technology to produce and separate various desirable compounds from crude oil. Cracking and fractionation operations are energy intensive and generate considerable quantities of greenhouse gases.
The gradual depletion of worldwide petroleum reserves and the commensurate increase in petroleum prices may place extraordinary pressure on refiners to minimize losses and improve efficiency when producing products from existing feedstocks, and also to seek viable alternative feedstocks capable of providing affordable hydrocarbon intermediates and liquid fuels to downstream consumers.
Methane may provide an attractive alternative feedstock for the production of hydrocarbon intermediates and liquid fuels due to its widespread availability and relatively low cost when compared to crude oil. Worldwide methane reserves may be in the hundreds of years at current consumption rates and new production stimulation technologies may make formerly unattractive methane deposits commercially viable.
Ethylene is an important commodity chemical intermediate. It may be used in the production of polyethylene plastics, polyvinyl chloride, ethylene oxide, ethylene chloride, ethylbenzene, alpha-olefins, linear alcohols, vinyl acetate, and fuel blendstocks such as, but not limited to, aromatics, alkanes, and alkenes. With economic growth in developed and developing portions of the world, demand for ethylene and ethylene based derivatives continues to increase. Currently, ethylene is produced through the cracking of ethane derived either from crude oil distillates, called naphtha, or from the relatively minor ethane component of natural gas. Ethylene production is primarily limited to high volume production as a commodity chemical in relatively large steam crackers or other petrochemical complexes that also process the large number of other hydrocarbon byproducts generated in the crude oil cracking process. Producing ethylene from far more abundant and significantly less expensive methane in natural gas provides an attractive alternative to ethylene derived from ethane in natural gas or crude oil. Oligomerization processes can be used to further convert ethylene into longer chain hydrocarbons useful as polymer components for plastics, vinyls, and other high value polymeric products. Additionally, these oligomerization processes may be used to convert ethylene to other longer hydrocarbons, such as C6, C7, C8 and longer hydrocarbons useful for fuels like gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and blendstocks for these fuels, as well as other high value specialty chemicals.